Posts

Payments processors Worldpay and Visa said Friday they are reversing duplicate transactions that recently caused unauthorized withdrawals for some users of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase.

“Worldpay and Coinbase have been working with Visa and Visa issuing banks to ensure that duplicate transactions have been reversed and appropriate credits have been posted to cardholder accounts,” the two payments processors said in a joint statement published Friday evening New York time on Coinbase’s Medium blog.”This issue was not caused by Coinbase.”

The statement added that all reversal transactions should appear on customers’ accounts in the next few days, and that the majority should already have posted.

Visa and Worldpay confirmed the statement to CNBC. Worldpay works with Coinbase to use Visa’s network. Not all card issuers were affected by the issue of unauthorized transactions.

San Francisco-based company Coinbase is the leading U.S. marketplace for buying and selling major cryptocurrencies.

In the last few days, an increasing number of Coinbase users took to Reddit and other social media to complain about duplicate transaction charges that sometimes drained the bank account to zero, with overdraft fees.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission said in a statement to CNBC Friday that “the CFTC is aware of customer complaints and is looking into this issue.”

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau also said in a statement that, “We are aware of the reports, and expect companies to comply with all applicable laws regarding the treatment of consumers’ funds. Consumers who find unauthorized charges in their bank account or credit card should contact their financial institution immediately.”

J.P. Morgan Chase did not respond to a CNBC request for comment. But the bank’s support Twitter account said earlier this month, in a reply to a customer who complained about a “$5 non chase atm fee,” that:

“The recent change to the way Coinbase transactions are processed is due to a reclassification between the merchant and Visa. Any cash-like transaction, such as this, will be assessed the cash advance fee. This is typically $5 or 5% of the charge.”

Wells Fargo declined to comment for this story.

Bitcoin marketplace Coinmama, which also supports Visa, told CNBC Friday they have had no issues so far with payments on their platform.

The impact of the issue Coinbase users were seeing appeared limited. CNBC reached out to more than 30 states where Coinbase is licensed to operate. Of the eight that responded, none of them reported an uptick in complaints against Coinbase.

A spokesperson for the Alabama Securities Commission did point out that typically, complaints can take weeks to arrive at their office. Customers generally first contact merchants, before regulators become involved.

Venezuela will launch a pre-sale of its commodity-backed “petro” cryptocurrency on Tuesday.

President Nicolas Maduro hopes the country’s own digital currency will help it to make financial transactions and get around Western sanctions.

Both the United States and the European Union have imposed economic sanctions on Venezuela over their opposition to its autocratic government. Last year, the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index downgraded Venezuela from a “hybrid regime” to an “authoritarian regime” due to its “continued slide towards dictatorship.”

Venezuela’s petro token will be backed by its oil, gas, gold and diamond reserves, according to the government. The country’s cryptocurrency regulator said Friday that it would draw investment from Qatar, Turkey and other Middle Eastern countries, as well as from European nations and the U.S.

The petro will not be available in the Venezuelan bolivar initially. Venezuela’s own hard currency collapsed as the South American state grappled with crippling hyperinflation.

‘This is chavismo drinking their own Kool-Aid’

Caracas has attracted a number of skeptics as it gears up to launch its cryptocurrency pre-sale.

Many doubt its digital currency venture will bring much benefit to either Venezuela’s economy or its people, who are suffering shortages in food and medicine due to price controls.

Francisco Toro, a Venezuelan journalist, political scientist and blogger, said that Venezuela was turning to cryptocurrency out of “desperation” because of its economic isolation from the United States.

“They have been trying to figure out ways to get around anti-money laundering sanctions provisions, and crypto is maybe one way they can do that,” Toro, who is editor of the blog Caracas Chronicles, told CNBC in a phone interview Saturday.

“I do think that part of this is about getting investors from non-traditional lenders, from Russia and China, to put in some more money, to lend fresh cash. The financial sanctions — the U.S. sanctions, the European sanctions — are not the main reason Venezuela can’t raise financing. The main reason Venezuela can’t raise financing is that macroeconomic finance is a s— show.”

As well as quadruple digit inflation, Venezuela has been facing an oil production collapse. Venezuelan crude production fell 29 percent in 2017. Many fear the accelerated fall in Venezuela’s oil output will increase the likelihood of it defaulting on its debts.

Carlos Becerra | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s president, addresses members of the media during a press event in Caracas, Venezuela.

Toro said that Venezuela’s economic woes have given it a bad credit reputation and that the government was trying to convince itself of the validity of chavismo, the left-wing political ideology established under former President Hugo Chavez.

“This idea that sanctions are hemming demand, that they need to need to get around sanctions, this is chavismo drinking their own Kool Aid and believing their own propaganda.”

‘Desperation breeds innovation’

But one analyst thinks the petro is an “excellent idea” and could serve as a precursor to similar projects from other world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Putin and Maduro have very similar problems,” Mati Greenspan, senior market analyst at social trading firm eToro, told CNBC in an email last week. “They both have a high dependence on the price of crude oil, which has been rather unstable in the last few years. They both have issues with U.S. sanctions and with the U.S. dollar being the world reserve currency.”

He added: “To think that of all the governments and banks who are toying with the idea it would be Nicolas Maduro who gets there first. I suppose desperation breeds innovation.”

Reports have emerged in recent months of Russia considering a digital version of its own currency, the rouble. Russia’s “cryptorouble” could be used as a means for the country to circumvent Western sanctions, a report in the Financial Times said last month, echoing Maduro’s own plans for Venezuela’s petro token.

CNBC contacted the Russian government’s press office for comment but a spokesperson was not immediately available.

Greenspan gave praise for the country’s plan to back petro tokens with its commodity reserves. Maduro has said petro tokens will each be pegged to the price of one barrel of Venezuelan oil.

“It’s an excellent idea to back the crypto with a hard commodity as the world is currently flooded with baseless money,” he said. “Surprisingly, we’ve seen very little support for this initiative in the crypto community, most likely because it seems the Venezuelans themselves don’t seem to have made up their minds just yet.”

Greenspan added: “In any case, I believe that the petro is actually targeting more institutional investors and other governments. They have more to spend then the crypto-billionaires anyway. No matter what happens, this is going to be an excellent pilot for Putin.”

Toro, however, expressed severe doubt that other countries — especially Russia — would look to Venezuela’s cryptocurrency for inspiration for their own projects experimenting with the technology.

“There is a science establishment in Russia,” Toro said, adding, “If Russia is going to launch a crypto, they are not going to copy some banana republic. It’s ridiculous. It’s totally silly. I do think it’s mostly noise.”

An expert on cryptocurrencies said he was “not fully convinced” that the petro’s backing in oil and mineral reserves would live up to expectations.

“This is basically an E&P (exploration and production) play from the traditional oil and gas market with a large dose of sovereign risk and room for manipulation,” Charles Hayter, chief executive of cryptocurrency comparison site CryptoCompare, told CNBC in an email.

Countries hit with sanctions are not alone in considering the possibility of their own digital currency. Many around the world are mulling the idea of virtual currency.

Sweden, for example, is looking into the possibility of a digital version of the Swedish crown, the “ekrona.” Cash use in the Scandinavian country has steeply declined in recent years.

Others, including Japan, Singapore and Estonia, are also considering such digital alternatives to hard currency.

The European Central Bank (ECB) stopped all payments by one of Latvia’s largest lenders on Monday, after its liquidity position collapsed in the wake of allegations from U.S. authorities.

The ECB requested Latvia’s banking supervisor impose a moratorium on ABLV bank, the small Baltic nation’s third-largest lender, in order to freeze all payments by the bank on its liabilities.

“In recent days, there has been a sharp deterioration of the bank’s financial position,” the ECB said in a statement Monday.

“A moratorium was considered necessary given that the bank is working with the Latvian central bank and authorities to address the current situation.”

What happened?

Last week, the U.S. Treasury accused ABLV bank of “institutionalized money laundering,” including allowing its clients to conduct business with parties connected to North Korea. This would be in violation of sanctions imposed by the United Nations (UN) following Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program.

In response, ABLV said the accusations were based on unfounded and misleading information. ABLV is based in Riga but also has an office in Luxembourg as well as a subsidiary in the U.S.

Why is this a crisis?

The moratorium imposed by the ECB — which supervises ABLV from Frankfurt, Germany — comes at a difficult time for Latvia’s banking sector as the head of the country’s central bank was detained by Riga’s anti-corruption agency over the weekend.

The home and offices of Ilmars Rimsevics, who also sits on the ECB’s rate-setting committee, were raided by officers from Latvia’s Corruption Prevention Bureau on Saturday. However, no details about the investigation or the nature of the raids have been made public. Latvian media has suggested the questioning of Rimsevics was not connected to ABLV.

The detention of Rimsevics prompted Latvia’s Prime Minister Maris Kucinskis to call an emergency cabinet meeting Monday. Shortly afterward, he told Latvian television that the head of the country’s central bank should resign.

Retail investors would feel the impact of a cryptocurrency market collapse the most, while institutional investors would be better protected against such an event, according to researchers.

“At this stage, we think that retail investors would be the first to bear the brunt in the event of a collapse in cryptocurrencies’ market value,” a report released by S&P Global Ratings said Monday.

“We expect rated banks to be largely insulated, given that their direct or indirect exposure to cryptocurrencies appears to remain limited.”

Cryptocurrencies dropped in price significantly amid a sharp sell-off earlier this month. The nascent market has recovered slightly following that decline, but the so-called market capitalization — the price of cryptocurrencies multiplied by circulating supply — is still around $330 billion off a record high posted last month.

The price of bitcoin fell below the $6,000 mark in the midst of a global stock market sell-off in early February, indicating that it shares a correlation to established financial assets.

Nevertheless, the S&P Global Ratings report said that a huge drop in the value of cryptocurrencies would still be unlikely to disrupt financial markets.

“For now, a meaningful drop in cryptocurrencies’ market value would be just a ripple across the financial services industry, still too small to disturb stability or affect the creditworthiness of banks we rate,” Mohamed Damak, S&P Global Ratings financial institutions sector lead, said in a statement Monday.

Digital currencies are not backed by governments and authorities have become increasingly concerned by them due to speculative investing and associated illicit activities.

“We believe that the future success of cryptocurrencies will largely depend on the coordinated approach of global regulators and policymakers to regulate and enhance market participants’ confidence in these instruments,” Damak added.

It said that cryptocurrencies’ underlying blockchain technology could lead to “positive” disruption in finance. Blockchain networks are decentralized, and maintain a continuously growing record of cryptocurrency transactions.

Parents terrified by the deadly school shooting in South Florida are spending big bucks on bulletproof backpacks for their kids, according to reports.

Massachusetts-based Bullet Blocker — which sells the fortified bags for between $200 to $500 — has seen a 30 percent surge in sales since Wednesday’s massacre in Parkland, according to TMZ.

The company sold 500 of the backpacks on Thursday alone, owner Joe Curran told the news outlet, adding that the majority were headed to Florida.

The backpacks, which weigh about 4 1/2 pounds, are lined with Kevlar, a fiber used in bulletproof vests that are used by law enforcement.

Bullet Blocker describes Curran on its website as “a real-life father who wanted to do all that he could to protect his two school-aged children after witnessing the horror of the Virginia Tech massacre.”

The former US Army Ranger, sheriff’s deputy and firearms instructor invented “My Child’s Pack,” the first bulletproof backpack designed for students, according to the company.

One of the backpacks listed on the site is the $330 BulletBlocker NIJ IIIA, which is available in three colors and contains an anti-ballistic panel weighing about 20 ounces.

Meghan Markle has never been interested in getting the royal treatment.

The “Suits” actress, who is engaged to Britain’s Prince Harry, has always preferred to maintain her natural features in Hollywood and her former makeup artist and hairstylist insisted the world should expect the same after the American beauty ties the knot later this spring.

“Every time I’d do her makeup, she’d say, ‘Can we just make sure my freckles are peeking through? I don’t want a ton of foundation,” Lydia F. Sellers recently told Refinery29.com. “It was more about the amount of product that went on her skin and keeping it really fresh and dewy, rather than caking it on.”

Sellers, who worked with the 36-year-old for two years before she moved overseas to be with her fiancé, insisted Markle was never interested in looking like the typical Hollywood star.

Meghan Markle greets well-wishers during a visit to Cardiff Castle with her fiancee Britain’s Prince Harry in Cardiff, Britain, January 18, 2018. (Reuters)

“She’s done such a good job of maintaining her sense of self amongst the spotlight,” she explained. “Even now, her look has stayed the same. She’ll throw her hair back in a low bun and it actually looks like she’s done it herself, and it’s beautiful and chic because she’s so confident. That’s the great thing about Meghan – she’s so confident with herself and her look, and she sticks with that.”

Markle also reportedly didn’t rely on a glam squad to ensure she was always picture-perfect. A former lifestyle blogger, Markle knew which beauty products best enhanced her features, whether she was in front of cameras or not.

“Meghan is very in-the-know – she had her blog for a while, so she just gets beauty,” said Sellers. “But her approach is very effortless. She just wants to look like a better version of herself. That’s something she believes firmly in.”

And similar to Harry’s late mother Princess Diana of Wales, Markle preferred a signature look when it came to her hair.

Meghan Markle leaves after visiting a school with her fiancee Britain’s Prince Harry in Nottingham, December 1, 2017. (Reuters)

“We’ve stuck to the same sleek look since I’ve known her,” said Sellers. “She’ll say, ‘Just give me a slight bend or a slight wave. Nothing too crazy… We styled her hair down a lot – that’s the look she gravitates toward. It could be straight or wavy or anything else, but she likes it down. So if it wasn’t a royal wedding, I think that’s what she would do.”

Markle herself has spoken out about embracing her biracial heritage in Hollywood. Back in 2017, Markle told Allure her biggest pet peeve was when magazines Photoshopped her skin tone.

“For castings, I was labeled ‘ethnically ambiguous,’” she said. “Was I Latina? Sephardic? ‘Exotic Caucasian’? Add the freckles to the mix and it created quite the conundrum.

“To this day, my pet peeve is when my skin tone is changed and my freckles are airbrushed out of a photo shoot. For all my freckled-faced friends out there, I will share with you something my dad told me when I was younger: ‘A face without freckles is a night without stars.’”

Britain’s Prince Harry whispers to Meghan Markle as they watch a performance by a Welsh choir in the banqueting hall during a visit to Cardiff Castle in Cardiff, Britain, January 18, 2018. (Reuters)

After the proposal, Harry told the BBC the “stars were aligned” when he got to know the future duchess more during a five-day camping trip in Botswana.

“The fact that I fell in love with Meghan so incredibly quickly was confirmation to me that all the stars were aligned,” said the 33-year-old. “This beautiful woman just tripped and fell into my life, I fell into her life. I know that she will be unbelievably good at the job part of it as well.”

Domestic violence survivor torches wedding dress at garage sale

Last weekend, Briana Barksdale welcomed friends and fellow residents of Spring, Tex. over for a garage sale that was anything but ordinary — she was commemorating her divorce made official and celebrating her survival of an abusive marriage.

Barksdale not only sold all the possessions remnant of the relationship, but set her wedding gown ablaze.

“This is for every woman who has ever been in a relationship that was abusive, that hurt, that they shouldn’t have stayed in, that they didn’t know how to get out of,” the 34-year-old mother of two told KHOU before dousing the gown with gasoline on a wooden pyre.

“Burn, baby, burn,” the divorcee sang as the gown burst into flames.

“It was a really rough situation, it was a bad situation — there are still criminal charges pending, so I can’t talk about a lot of it, but yeah, not a great guy,” she told the outlet. “I ended up pretty much with everything, so I’m getting rid of the stuff that was ours and going on with mine.”

According to USA Today, prices at the garage sale ranged from 50 cents to $30, as she sold everything from dishes to a computer to entire furniture sets. Family and friends applauded the symbolic closure of the event.

“I think it’s a good release for her and she needs it to get over with everything she’s been through,” one customer told KHOU. Before Barksdale set the dress on fire, garage sale goers signed the gown, some with more colorful language than others against her ex-husband of 13 years, Mike.

Barksdale told KMOV that her ex-husband cheated on her and was violent. Court records show that Mike is serving seven years of probation and community service after pleading guilty to the assault of a family member, the outlet reported.

“So I joke about it, Was it worth it? Absolutely. Divorce is expensive, because it’s worth it,” Barksdale quipped. “And so, will I be eating Ramen until I’m 50? Probably. But single Ramen is better than married filet mignon.”

The Texas woman isn’t the only funny lady to make recent headlines with to close a divorce with a grand gesture. In recent weeks, one Canadian woman threw a boozy “divorce party” and another New Zealand divorcee auctioned off her wedding gown to a strip club.

All in all, Barksdale wouldn’t have it any other way.

“This is symbolic of freedom. This is symbolic of moving forward,” she said. “This is symbolic of letting go of the past and moving forward to the future.”

This past Tuesday, US figure skater Mirai Nagasu made history. So did a woman named Pat Pearsall.

You might already be familiar with Nagasu: The American skater’s unprecedented triple axel — and fist-pumping, whooping celebration — earned her a top trending spot on Twitter that night. Everyone cheered for the 24-year-old in the ruby-red dress.

US figure skater Mirai Nagasu made history in a ruby red dress. (Reuters)

As for Pearsall? Well, she’s the designer to thank for that now-famous costume — and, in a tiny way, for making sure Nagasu nailed that momentous jump.

“With a triple axel in her program, Mirai didn’t want anything weighing her down,” Pearsall tells The Post. “Every stone on a dress, every drop of glue adds up.” So Pearsall, who modeled the look after Halle Berry’s slinky scarlet gown in the James Bond movie “Die Another Day,” exercised some serious sparkle restraint. Whereas a standard skate dress may boast some 5,000 crystals (usually Swarovski), Nagasu’s shimmers with a modest 2,200-ish.

In figure skating, the right costume can make or break a performance. A wardrobe malfunction can trigger a fall or make executing certain jumps and spins difficult, while a dazzling, well-engineered ensemble supports even the trickiest move — and can turn an athlete into an icon.

“The last thing you ever want to do as a designer is do anything to the dress that would affect the skate,” says Pearsall, who’s dressed top toe-pickers for 20 years.

Min Yu-ra and Alexander Gamelin of South Korea compete in a performance in which her top nearly came off. (Reuters)

She was horrified when South Korean skater Yura Min almost found herself topless on television during last week’s team skate, after a hook came undone. “When I’m doing closures on a dress, I sew and knot, sew and knot, sew and knot,” Pearsall says. “It’s redundant, but you have to go overboard. I mean, that thing’s not coming off.”

Cloth, too, must be chosen wisely, to allow skaters a full range of motion. “I work with all stretch fabrics, with Lycra in them,” Gail Johnson, who designed Olympian Bradie Tennell’s dresses, tells The Post. They provide the best mobility, and they’re “durable,” she explains. Meanwhile, Lisa McKinnon, whose Olympic-athlete clients include Vincent Zhou, pairs skaters Chris and Alexa Knierim and the ice-dancing Shibutani siblings, is open to nonstretch fabrics — but only if they’re used in the right way.

Fan favorites Maia and Alex Shibutani are a sibling act. (Reuters)

“I chose chiffon for [Maia Shibutani’s] short-program skirt because it gives a nice, full look,” which was ideal for their lively Latin-dance number, “but it’s not heavy,” she tells The Post. “She can’t have it swinging her around while she does her twizzles.”

There’s also a dress code to consider. The International Skating Union, one of the sport’s most important governing bodies, sets the terms for Olympic costumes. The rules have changed over time — for example, in 2006, women were granted the right to forgo traditional dresses for trousers and skirtless unitards — but the guiding mandate is that athletes look “modest, dignified and appropriate.”

Essentially, Pearsall says, judges are concerned about skaters looking “too naked” on the ice. (“It makes sense,” she adds. “They’re often quite young.”) To that end, 50 percent of a performer’s upper body has to be covered during their programs — and flesh-toned mesh, used by almost all designers, doesn’t count toward that.

Even when designers do check all the boxes, that doesn’t necessarily mean a look will pass muster with judges.

“There are rules, and then there are unwritten rules,” Braden Overett, the designer behind Adam Rippon’s Olympic looks. (Reuters)

“There are rules, and then there are unwritten rules,” Braden Overett, the designer behind Adam Rippon’s Olympic looks, tells The Post. “When you’re an A-list skater, you’re essentially representing the entire sport on behalf of your country, to the world, so there are a lot of systems of feedback in place.”

Overett, who was a competitive skater himself, says that there’s an informal review process before major competitions such as the Olympics, during which judges communicate their preferences. Although judges “don’t mandate” what you can and cannot wear, it’s not something to be taken lightly, either, he says. (He killed a sleeveless top for Rippon a few seasons ago because he heard that judges weren’t feeling it.)

“You can’t please everyone,” he says, “but this sport is about putting yourself together in the best way possible, to do the best you can for the best result.”

A transgender woman has become the first recorded to successfully breastfeed her baby, The Washington Post reported, citing a study published last month in Transgender Health.

The 30-year-old said she decided to breastfeed her then-unborn baby. Her partner was pregnant with the baby, but didn’t plan on breastfeeding, The Post reported.

According to the study, the woman underwent a three-and-half month treatment that included a drug to stimulate lactation and hormone therapy to suppress testosterone. The patient had not yet undergone gender reassignment surgery, the report said.

The patient was given additional supplements to induce lactation and told to use a breast pump, the study said. After a month of treatment, the patient was reportedly producing “droplets” of milk. After three months, the patient was reportedly producing 8 ounces of milk a day.

According to the study, the patient breastfed the baby for the first six weeks after birth during which the “child’s growth, feeding and bowel habits were developmentally appropriate.” Later on, the study said, the patient had to supplement the breastfeeding with formula since she wasn’t producing enough milk.

While the treatment has been hailed as a breakthrough in some circles, Madeline Deutsch, a doctor and also a transgender woman with a child, said contemporary research is inadequate. She said she empathizes with transgender parents, but trying to induce lactation is “not something I would do.”

Deutsch said the issue needs to be explored more since “there are unknowns about the nutritional picture of the milk.”

There is an urgent need to replenish the blood supply in Florida following Wednesday’s school shooting. The area hospitals were prepared with blood on-hand at the time of the massacre, but now there is an effort to replenish blood type O negative, the kind most commonly used in trauma situations.

OneBlood, a Florida-based blood center, rushed several hundred additional units to Broward Health North Hospital and Broward Health Medical Center immediately after they were notified of the mass casualties.

OneBlood’s vice president of marketing and communications, Susan Forbes, told Fox News they are urging people to donate more O negative to replenish the supply that was dispatched.

“Seven percent of the population has O negative blood,” Forbes explained. “However, it is the type in the most demand because it is the universal blood type, meaning it can be given to anyone regardless of the patient’s blood type,” she said, adding that during emergencies doctors don’t have time to check blood type.

Forbes explained blood can take a few days to process. The additional units sent following the shooting were donated just a few days ago, so “the people who donated blood when there was no tragedy are really the first responders who do their part to save lives.”

According to the American Red Cross, every two seconds someone is in need of a blood transfusion in this country.

“People cannot take blood supply for granted, yesterday’s shooting shows why a ready blood supply is imperative 365 days a year, don’t wait for the tragedy!”

OneBlood collected 28,500 units of blood within seven days following the 2016 nightclub shooting in Orlando, replenishing 85 percent of the supply that was used on the victims

OneBlood is urging people who have O-negative blood type to visit a donor center or Big Red Bus to help replenish the supply. People age 16 or older who weigh at least 110 pounds are eligible to give.

Forbes said people Thursday morning are starting to come to their centers to do their part, “It’s a heartwarming to see people come back and help replenish blood supply.”